abandonware games sorted by popularity

Before Diablo made clicking on dungeons cool, DarkSpyre was already throwing players into labyrinths filled with monsters and puzzles. Released in 1990, it combines hack-and-slash ...

Stonekeep is a first-person role-playing game (RPG) developed by Interplay Entertainment. It was released for MS-DOS in 1995 and later for other platforms such as Windows and Macin...

Luigi and Spaghetti (1992, DOS) sounds like a dinner order but is actually an educational puzzle adventure. You guide a tiny robot named Luigi (no, not that one) through logic puzz...

Based on a French comic series, Black Moon Chronicles (1999) is what you'd get if a fantasy novel and a real-time strategy game had a slightly awkward baby. The art is dark, the to...

Ground Control is a strategy game developed by Massive Entertainment and released by Sierra On-Line in 2000. More precisely Ground Control is a real time tactical game with a sci-f...

The Lost Patrol (1991, DOS) drops you into the brutal jungles of Vietnam, where survival depends on strategy, luck, and maybe divine intervention. You lead a squad of exhausted sol...

A text/graphic adventure from 1986 for DOS and Mac, Star Trek: The Promethean Prophecy is the precursor to Kobayashi Alternative but far more playable. You explore alien worlds, so...

Turns out war is a lot tidier when it’s turn-based. Battle Isle (1991) gives you neat little hexagons to move your units on, like a very angry board game. It’s got stra...

Welcome to the Ys series, where you swing swords by running headfirst into enemies. The Vanished Omens introduces Adol Christin, red-haired hero extraordinaire, as he embarks on a ...

Part action-RPG, part body-horror fairy tale, Entomorph: Plague of the Darkfall (1995) is the game where you slowly transform into an insect and, somehow, that’s not even the...

Based on the film that made air guitar cool (briefly), Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure is a time-traveling puzzler where history class meets stoner logic. Gather historical figu...

In Dragon Riders: Chronicles of Pern, you don’t just ride dragons—you babysit them, talk to them, and occasionally save the world while trying not to fall off mid-fligh...

Everyone’s favorite egg hero returns in Kwik Snax Dizzy (1993, DOS), a fast-paced puzzle game where reflexes and planning matter more than cholesterol levels. You’ll pu...

Welcome to Tass Times in Tonetown, where the ‘80s collided with science fiction and nobody cleaned up the mess. It’s a bizarre adventure full of punk hairdos, neon colo...